


Will We Burn, or Will We Just Smolder?

by fairysquadmother



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Anxiety Disorder, Canon Divergence, F/M, Jesse McCree deserves to be loved, M/M, Mildly Graphic Depictions of Panic Attacks, NC-17 sex scenes, Not Suitable/Safe For Work, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Strike Commander Morrison Never Knows What's Really Going On, i'm not sure how this is going to unfold so expect anything
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-20
Updated: 2017-07-20
Packaged: 2018-12-04 11:00:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11553807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairysquadmother/pseuds/fairysquadmother
Summary: Jesse McCree has a new job, a new life, and a couple of really good-looking partners.Blackwatch treats him well, he's got friends who care about him now, and there is no end to the exciting new experiences he has.This new operation, however, is dredging up parts of his recent past that he still hasn't taken the chance to come to terms with.Will he make it, or will he lose his mind?





	Will We Burn, or Will We Just Smolder?

**Author's Note:**

> Heya, welcome to this dumpster fire. Please forgive any inconsistencies with canon, as I am new to the OW fandom and I'm still digging up all of the lore I can.  
> If you guys know a good beta reader, please direct them to my inbox on tumblr @bespokemanners as I have been known to make mistakes before in my writing, and I'm always looking for new fandom friends *thumbs up emoji*
> 
> Comment, subscribe, kudos, and constructive criticism always appreciated <3

Jesse had always and ever been a creature of comfort. He liked soft blankets and socks and warm drinks and being held while he slept. Granted, in his line of work, those were frivolous fancies, but damn if he didn't try and take them where he could.  
The only two people on this earth who knew about this were Jack and Gabe, too. Jesse hid it very well. You weren't allowed to be a ranking officer in Overwatch and let people know that you were human and had needs.  
Jack was a shining example of this, but Gabriel was less so. Gabe had never in his life done anything other than exactly what he wanted, but he could be one scary motherfucker, so people tended not to ask questions when he wore a big soft hoodie, sweatpants, and house shoes to a briefing.  
Jesse knew for a fact that Ana bought him those bright pink piggy slippers, but he kept his mouth shut and _did not laugh_ when Gabe showed up to the council board meeting wearing them.  
“ _Gabriel_ ,” Jack hissed, when Jesse and Gabe shuffled in with their coffee and freshly baked breakfast scones from Reinhardt.  
“ _Ángel_ ,” Gabe rumbled in reply, dropping a kiss on Jack’s forehead in front of God and everybody. He proceeded to sit down next to Jack and put his pork-adorned feet up on the table, taking sips of his four-sugars-two-creams coffee all the while.  
Smirking, Jesse leaned down to tuck a much more discreet kiss behind Jack’s ear, then slipped into the chair on his left. There was a manilla folder half an inch thick in front of him, with the Overwatch logo emblazoned on the cover sheet. “S’lookin’ more and more like they’re trying to deploy us, Jack.” He kept his voice low; the room was filling up will more and more world government officials by the minute and while Gabe was a scary looking motherfucker with no cares in the world, Jesse was at best a mildly concerning looking pipsqueak with half a beard and zero reputation in the organization.  
“I don’t know what they’re going to do.” Jack ran a harried hand through his hair, seeming to age five years while he hunched over his own folder and actively looked away from anyone trying to meet his eyes.  
Jesse shot a look at Gabe, who just held up a hand behind Jack’s back and shook his head. He slipped his arm around Jack’s shoulders and gave him a swig of coffee. They were so domestic at times, with the way Jack let Gabe get away with everything, and how Gabe knew how to calm Jack’s nerves in a few quiet moments. Already, Jack had softened. Jesse shyly offered him his hand underneath the table, and Jack took it, stroking over Jesse’s knuckles with the calloused pad of his thumb. He watched Jack take a breath, and then sit forward in his chair. Gabe’s arm fell lower, around his waist and out of sight from the vidcomm, which had just booted up in preparation for the call they’d been waiting for.  
“Mr. President,” greeted Jack, looking the picture of perfection.  
Jesse took his hat off, a little appalled. He bit his lip and wished he’d remembered to brush his hair before he left their bedroom this morning, but Gabe had distracted him up until the last moment with...other things. The back of his neck heated up when the President made brief eye contact with him before addressing Jack.  
“Strike Commander Morrison, good morning. Are you well?” The President folded his hands on his desk, doing a sweep of everyone he saw in the room. His eyes stuck on Gabe, and Jack squeezed Jesse’s hand. “Reyes. You’d do well to remember your place.”  
Gabe sighed through his nose, as though he were exasperated. “You’d do well to remember yours. Don’t pick fights when you know you don’t have the ammunition--” He raised an eyebrow, meeting the President’s gaze. “Or the information.”  
“ _Gabe_.” Jack was stricken, Gabe looked indifferent, the President looked ominously on the verge of anger, and Jesse figured it was about time that he stepped in to defuse the situation.  
“Mr. President, I don’t believe that we’ve met,” Jesse said, laying honey thick on his accent. “It’s my pleasure to meet ya--the name’s McCree. I’m the man you so graciously promoted to second lieutenant on the Blackwatch team.”  
The President turned his attention to McCree, and so did everyone else in the room. Jack went back to stroking Jesse’s knuckles, and Gabe finally decided to put his feet down and open his folder. “I hope I made the correct decision, Mr. McCree. We’ve had problems from Blackwatch in the past.”  
From the corner of his eye, Jesse saw Jack grab Gabe’s thigh with his other hand, to which Gabe responded by flipping a page in his folder and rolling his tongue in his cheek. Jesse took a breath. “I’m a level-headed man, I like to think. There’s not many around that I can’t get along with. I may not have a military background, but what I do have is people skills.” He smiled, flashing his dimples just a little. “That, an’ I don’t miss.”  
“That’s...good to hear.” The President nodded to himself, then cleared his throat and opened up his own folder. “Our upcoming business is new, this will be a covert operation run by Strike Commander Morrison, and Blackwatch will perform the task. We have our newest Blackwatch agent, Genji Shimada, here to speak with us about exactly what’s going on, and why we’re so rushed to begin the operation.”  
The door behind the Japanese representative opened, and in slipped a young man in a hood. McCree’s hand was on Peacekeeper before he could stop himself, but the hood was dropped soon enough.  
“Hello,” said (presumably) Genji Shimada. He wore a mask, and looked to be at least half robot. “I’m afraid the situation is dire. As we speak, the group we will be hunting are working on a nanotechnology virus that, if used on anyone with cybernetics, will cause those cybernetics to implode. This threatens omnics, cyborgs such as myself, and anyone with any sort of implant or limb replacements.” He pulled a palm pad out of his pocket and tapped it, and Jesse watched as the vidcomm pulled up a video in the corner of the screen. “I have already begun to infiltrate the group, known only as Talon, and I procured some disturbing footage of the technology they already have.”  
The video began to play, showing a man with a cybernetic arm strapped to a table. There were several white coats busy around him, checking his vitals and scribbling on clipboards. The footage appeared to be from a first person perspective, that of a doctor in the room.  
“Test three hundred and twelve, serum C, third deviation, patient number 117. Prosthetic replacement due to a mining explosion,” the person the camera had been planted on said. “Give him the injection.”  
The man on the table began to hyperventilate into his oxygen mask, trying desperately to break free from his bonds as one of the technicians produced a hypodermic needle and stabbed it none too gently into the man’s flesh arm.  
“Clear the room.” The doctors exited and began to watch the patient from behind a mid-grade blast-shielded two way mirror.  
Jesse began to get nervous. He watched on, as the man began to convulse. His metal arm began to glow red and smoke, and then he began to scream at the top of his lungs for about thirty seconds before his arm exploded and railed the room with shards of white-hot shrapnel. Where the prosthetic had been, there was only a bloody stump. The man had since gone limp from the pain of having his arm blown off for the second time in his life. Jesse touched his own arm, right where the skin of his shoulder met metal, and shuddered. The gasps of the world’s representatives echoed around the room. Jesse felt very strange; he couldn't take his eyes off the freeze frame of the man limp on the table, with what was left of his arm pooling blood on the tile floor. There was the faintest of echoes in the back of his mind; the screams from the memory of his own amputation, and then this patient’s. This random fucking guy who probably signed up for it. Jesse could hear his screams still, and they harmonized with his own. He didn't know he was breathing hard until Jack smoothed his hand over the inside of this thigh and jolted him back to reality.  
Genji paused the video. “This is only their testing phases. Talon intends to weaponize this, refine it and use it for terrorist attacks. Lena Oxford and I have done our best to procure what we can from the limited resources we can get to without directly making contact, but now is the best time to, how do you say, _nip this in the bud_. I believe having agents infiltrate this group will be in our best interests, considering that all of the recent terrorist attacks can be, in fact, traced back to Talon.”  
“Thank you for your time, Mr. Shimada.” Genji inclined his head and sat down next to his representative. Jack did not look as shaken as Jesse felt. That must be the Strike Commander in him. “Mr. President, I believe we’ve seen all we need to. I’ll brief the members of Blackwatch personally, and then will file the report and forward it for you to read.”  
Gabe stood up and stretched, the movement abrupt to everyone except for Jack and Jesse. “If that’s all,” he said, swiping the folder and walking over to lift Jesse onto his feet. “There are some weird German pastries calling my name. Text me later, Mr. President.” He saluted lazily before taking Jesse firmly by the arm and leading him out of the room.  
“Jack’s gonna be so mad,” Jesse murmured, when the door shut behind him. His ears were ringing, and when he tried to keep walking, his knees buckled. “I made an ass of myself in there.”  
Gabe grunted and then picked Jesse up in his arms. “He’s not mad, baby.” He took Jesse’s face in his hand so that their eyes met. “He’s not mad.”  
Jesse hid his face in Gabe shoulder, feeling confused and angry for no reason. He let Gabe carry him, didn’t know where to until the door opened to their bedroom and Gabe laid him out on the bed. The smells of the bedding settled Jesse’s soul a bit. Cinnamon gum and gun oil for Jack, Old Spice cologne and clean sweat for Gabe. In the midst of it, Jesse rolled over and pressed his face into the big soft blanket Gabe had bought for him in Seoul, inhaling his own tobacco and white soap smell that fit right in with everything else.  
With careful, gentle hands, Gabe pulled Jesse’s boots off. “Stay here and snuggle up for me, I’m gonna go and get some more coffee, make sure Jack doesn’t do anything drastic. I’ll be right back, and then we’ll take a nap before we go and spar with Ana and Rein later, okay?” He crawled up between Jesse’s legs and gave him a kiss on his mouth, then each of his cheeks, then his forehead and nose. “I love you.”  
Jesse couldn’t help but smile, then. He looped his arms around Gabe’s neck and kissed him back, desperate as ever for attention. “I love you too.”  
Gabe cradled Jesse’s face in his hand, his expression unreadable. “Everything’s going to be okay. I’m gonna talk to Jack.” His thumb touched the corner of Jesse’s eye, hesitant.  
“Okay.” Jesse’s voice came out softer than he meant it to, but he just touched his forehead to Gabe’s before wrapping himself up in his blankets and tucking himself into a ball. He felt Gabe slide off of the bed, kiss the top of his head, and then shut the door behind him.  
It was only then that Jesse let himself break down. He didn’t understand the tears, but the memory of his amputation played behind his eyelids every time he blinked, flickering like a bad film. Sobs wracked his whole body, shaking him to his core. Tomorrow would be six months since it had happened. Jesse clapped his hand over the line between metal and flesh, digging his nails into the tender scar tissue there in an attempt to cling to his senses. It felt like the layer of skin behind his face was filled with bees, buzzing and numbing him all the way down his neck until he couldn’t even feel himself crying anymore.  
Some time later, the door opened, and while Jesse wiped his face into the blanket afraid that Gabe was going to catch him crying, he caught sight of blonde hair and blue eyes and felt himself melt back into hysterics.  
“Shh, shh, sweetheart,” said Jack, sitting on the edge of the bed so Jesse could wrap around his waist and cling to him. “Oh, baby, I’m so sorry.”  
Jack didn’t tell him not to cry, like Gabe would, but instead let him get it out. The only times he ever took preventative measures was when Jesse would start to hyperventilate again, or start trying to claw at his arm. “That’s it, pretty. I’m right here. Everything’s going to be just fine, yeah? I’m not going anywhere, I promise.”  
Jesse pulled him down on the bed, in full dress uniform, and began to cry into his collar. He was tired still, and all of the roaring emotions were dwindling down to one single, small, pathetic cry that kept it going.  
To his credit, Jack _wasn’t_ mad. He was very warm, and when he began to pet Jesse’s hair, it was over. Jesse fell asleep before he could summon up another thought in his head.


End file.
